


masterpieces serving maximum sentences

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: all the living are dead, and the dead are all living [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Autistic Hornet, Autistic Quirrel, Comfort Sex, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Fisting, Friends With Benefits, Implied/Referenced Amputation, Implied/Referenced Memory Loss, Just Sex, No Romance, Sex, Touch-Starved, Vaginal Fingering, Weird Biology, Xeno, sex as stimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27945884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Meeting by chance by the Lake of Unn, Hornet and Quirrel engage in some stress relief.
Relationships: Hornet/Quirrel (Hollow Knight)
Series: all the living are dead, and the dead are all living [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2057055
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	masterpieces serving maximum sentences

Hornet doesn’t know what draws her to the Lake of Unn. 

It’s peaceful, certainly, but it isn’t safe. Nowhere in Hallownest is safe. The Mosskin that gather on the pier may be more taken with the sight of the lake than the prospect of cutting Hornet down where she stands, but they still _will_ , if she so much as twitches her needle in their direction.

Maybe it’s just that everywhere else in Hallownest is so ravaged by the Pale King’s hubris and the Radiance’s fury that it feels less crushing to walk the domain of a Higher Being that hasn’t personally hurt her.

Hornet braces herself for a fight as she nears the lake, but the pier is empty, except for a dropped nail that looks like it belonged to a Moss Knight.

The lake burbles peacefully against its shore. Hornet stares out over it for a moment. 

Something unnameable, unknowable, squeezes tight in her chest. She tends it for a moment, the same way she would tend a fire, then lets it gutter out.

She expects the temple to be empty, when she walks inside.

It isn’t.

The bug looks up when she enters, fingers curling around the hilt of his nail, but he doesn’t rise. His whole body is still—not quite relaxed, but not wasting energy with tension, either. 

Hornet recognizes him. She met him just outside of Hallownest—the bug wearing the mask of Monomon the Teacher. His nail lies on his lap; one hand on its hilt, the other dragging a cleaning cloth up and down the length of it.

“Well-met,” he says, warmly, as though she didn’t try to kill him on their first—and only—meeting. “I don’t believe I introduced myself. I am Quirrel.”

Caught off guard by his politeness, Hornet falls back on memorized civilities. “I am Hornet, princess-protector of Hallownest. I would apologize for my lapse in manners during our first meeting, but at the time I believed you an interloper.”

“I wish I could tell you that you were wrong about this place,” Quirrel says, his gaze dropping back to his nail. “But for all that there is life within it, we are no more than Vengeflies picking a corpse clean.”

Hornet stares at him as he cleans his nail. Monomon’s mask—not to mention the amputated stumps of all but two of his limb sets—implies that Quirrel is originally from Hallownest, and from its height, too.

The mask is really Monomon's, then. It must be, for Quirrel to have survived outside of Hallownest’s stasis.

(Real, too, are the rumors that to leave Hallownest is to sacrifice your memory—all but your name, if you’re even permitted to keep that.)

“Hornet?” Quirrel asks. “Is there something you need?”

Quirrel is looking at her again, steady and unjudging. He leans his nail against the temple’s wall, sitting back to look at her properly. His gaze pierces Hornet in a not-quite-unpleasant way.

She can’t find an answer for him. She spins her needle, less for the idle motion and more to ground herself.

Before the silence can become awkward, Quirrel fills it, his voice still light. “Have you met the—” he gestures with a claw at about the height of his chest. “The little knight?”

Hornet’s chest seizes up at the mention of her sibling. She nods, at a loss, and forces herself to stop spinning her needle.

Quirrel lights up. His slouched posture lifts almost fully upright, and his hands flutter in front of his chest for a moment, before settling back to his lap and winding together. “If there is anything in this place worth saving, it is them,” he says, firmly.

They agree on that, at least, for all that it’s impossible.

Hornet hugs herself tight with the arms she hides beneath her cloak. The little ghost will die, whether they succeed or fail in their pursuit.

Though she attempts to conceal it, Hornet’s knowledge must show on her face, because Quirrel reaches for her.

He extends his hand, with the same ease and care that he tends his nail, and Hornet—unthinkingly—reaches back.

Their fingers lace together.

It shouldn’t be easy. It’s been so long since Hornet’s touched anything that didn’t want to kill her; anything but Midwife’s occasional extended forelimb, or her mother’s quiet body. 

Some time ago, before the little Ghost came to Hallownest, she cradled another vessel in her arms, held them steady while they—

That must have been the last time she was touched like this. Tenderly, carefully.

“There isn’t much left here,” Quirrel says, startling her with how close his words align to her thoughts. “And something makes me think you haven’t left.”

Hornet laughs, softly. Quirrel is holding her hand, his clawpads warm and rough against her fingers. She can’t think of anything else. She doesn’t want to.

She unfolds another set of arms from under her cloak and tucks her nail onto her back with them, so she can take Quirrel’s other hand.

He squeezes, gently. As if he knows. As if he cares.

Hornet drops into his lap.

It’s not a graceful movement—she has spent so long on her feet, hanging from her silk when she must rest, never letting herself sink lower than she absolutely must. Actually sitting, especially so close to another bug, arranging her limbs around Quirrel’s… it’s difficult.

Quirrel wraps his arms around her, warm and solid and _soft_ when she leans into him, and it’s worth all possible awkwardness.

“What do you desire from me?” Quirrel asks, even more gently than he’s holding her.

_Everything_ , Hornet wants to say, her whole body buzzing with the closeness, the warmth of him. She can smell the haemolymph beneath his carapace, untinged by infection.

Quirrel is nuzzling against her neck. His mandibles brush her carapace, gossamer-light, and Hornet struggles to breathe. She makes a noisy, undignified sound in her throat.

“I want you to touch me,” Hornet says, her voice rasping and unsteady. She shifts on Quirrel’s lap, arms unfolding to steady herself. She tugs one of his hands to the base of her abdomen, letting him find her slit with his fingers.

“I’ll admit, I’m not familiar with your anatomy,” Quirrel says, tracing her slit with a delicacy that makes Hornet shudder with more than arousal. “Is it more sensitive inside or out?”

Hornet squirms. She wraps two pairs of arms around Quirrel and one around herself, for some semblance of steadiness. “Inside,” she manages, working her mandibles together so she won’t sink them into the join of Quirrel’s neck and shoulder.

Then his clawtip dips inside her, and Hornet’s whole world goes unbearably bright.

“Is this all right?” Quirrel asks, holding his hand utterly still, despite his mild voice going shuddery with arousal.

Hornet whimpers something in the realm of _yes, please, yes_ , and he finally starts to move.

Quirrel holds her tight to his chest as he fingers her, mandibles fluttering against her throat, and Hornet can’t think, she can’t feel anything but the crashing waves of something like pleasure, and yet far too complex to define with words meant to describe an incentive to mate.

She shakes with it. From the tips of her horns to every clawtip she trembles under the onslaught of her own arousal, only vaguely aware that Quirrel is working his fingers deeper into her, exploring her epigyne with clawpads hardened by time.

Hornet has been touched before. She has worked herself open on her fingers, simply for the stress relief of a sensation that isn’t the low thrum of pain and exhaustion. It's nothing like the deep, pressing pleasure of being penetrated by another spider’s pedipalps—though her experience with that is limited to fumbling experimentation in her youth—but it can be enjoyable.

She isn’t sure what Quirrel is doing to make it feel so good, but it does, it _does._ By his own admission he’s new to this, though he clearly has some experience, if not with spiders, specifically.

It occurs to Hornet, somewhere in the part of her mind that isn’t either ragged with lust or busy restraining her instincts to bite down on the clean sweetness of his uninfected flesh, that she should probably reciprocate.

“Quirrel,” she asks, high in her throat, and Quirrel stops moving, which she didn’t want, but leaves his fingers in her. “Do, ah—” she grinds down on his hand, seeking sensation. “Do you want me to touch you?”

Quirrel breathes what might be a laugh against the side of her head. “I don’t think I’ll be able to focus if you do.”

Hornet can’t argue with that, and once Quirrel starts to move his hand again, she has no desire to.

Resting her forehead on his shoulder, Hornet can see Quirrel’s fingers disappearing into her slit, his wrist turning back and forth as he strokes her walls.

He is _unfairly_ good at this.

“You’re so loose,” Quirrel murmurs, and Hornet goes shuddery-warm all over. “Could you take my whole hand, do you think?”

“I think there’s no way to answer that but to try,” Hornet replies, her voice rising into the same register that it does when she laughs during a fight.

Quirrel tightens his free arm around her back, pulling her closer to his chest, getting his hand under her to let gravity do the work. His clawpads scrape against her walls as he shifts her, and Hornet’s whole body convulses from the sheer overstimulation.

Then she sinks down onto his hand, and her vision goes completely white.

She doesn’t cum, not exactly. For as nimble as Quirrel’s fingers are, they aren’t the shape or length to traverse a spider’s epigyne, and an egg-laying spider’s orgasm is more a sign of successfully deposited sperm than a threshold of pleasure reached.

Hornet isn’t thinking about the literal definition of an orgasm, when the pleasure coursing through her peaks, making her shake so violently that she has to cling to Quirrel to keep from falling off his lap.

Quirrel laughs. It’s a soft, breathy little thing, the sweetness of it only undercut by the amusingly wet sound of him pulling his hand out of Hornet’s slit. “I hope that was satisfactory, dear.”

“‘Satisfactory’?” Hornet huffs, shifting on his lap to adjust to the sudden emptiness. “Modesty is annoying when the facts are clear. Shall I return the favor?”

Quirrel makes a humming noise. His mandibles flicker over his hand, licking up the fluid clinging to his fingers, which really shouldn’t be so attractive. After a moment, he shakes his head. “It was plenty pleasurable just to touch you, Hornet,” he says, with that disarming smile of his.

Hornet nods. She can imagine that he’s overstimulated as well, if he isn’t just not in the mood. 

Still trembling with the afterglow, she leans into Quirrel’s chest.

“You may rest with me as long as you like,” Quirrel says, settling his arms around her. The touch still warms Hornet, although her arousal has ebbed to nothing. “This temple is safe. The Mosskin do not disturb it.”

As Hornet settles herself, halfway on Quirrel’s lap and halfway on the bench, she watches him pick up his nail.

That, more than anything, permits her to close her eyes.

She hears Quirrel humming quietly, a tune that reminds her far too much of her mother’s lullabies, and then hears nothing at all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [hydrangeamaiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangeamaiden/pseuds/hydrangeamaiden) Log in to view. 




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